


Positive Thinking

by Severina



Category: Walking Dead (TV)
Genre: Community: hc_bingo
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-11-03
Updated: 2013-11-03
Packaged: 2017-12-31 07:48:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 926
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1029126
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Severina/pseuds/Severina
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>She's rotating her neck to ease out the kinks when she sees the walker lurch from behind the parked car.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Positive Thinking

**Author's Note:**

> Written for LJ's hc_bingo community for the prompt "forced to face fear". Post Season Two.
> 
> * * *

The walkers spill from the warehouse like water flowing over rocks in a stream, and despite the attack on the farm – despite knowing that now they congregate together, that they 'herd' – Beth is still overwhelmed by the sheer number of them. 

Her heart speeds up, and the fireplace poker she'd clutched so confidently as they made their way through the industrial park feels flimsy and insufficient in her suddenly slick palm. All the lessons that she'd painstakingly tried to take in from Daryl and Rick over the past month turn to white noise in her brain. It's only when Maggie brushes past her and gets into the formation she's been practicing with the others that Beth remembers that she's supposed to stay toward the back, keep an eye on the rear so they don't get surrounded. She takes a halting step backwards, nearly stumbles over one of the bodies sprawled lifelessly on the ground. She finds herself unable to pull her eyes away from the approaching horde.

Then Glenn takes the first swing, his baseball bat connecting with a sickening, satisfying crunch that caves in the head of a walker, sends the geek tumbling onto the gravel. Beth winces, swallows so loudly that she swears she can hear it even over the snarls and groans of the geeks. Daryl's arrow pierces the skull of another before he whips the crossbow onto his back and slides his knife free. And then they are all swinging, moving in sleek formation just like they'd drilled for so long, and it's terrifying and beautiful all at the same time.

Beth gets a two-handed grip on her poker, turns to the side so she can keep one eye on the fight and one on the cluster of abandoned vehicles in the lot. She jumps a little whenever one of the walkers lunges too close to her sister, to Glenn. Finds herself balancing on the tips of her sneakers, caught halfway between stillness and movement. 

It's only when the final walker has been felled that Beth realizes her entire body is taut, stiff with tension. She forces herself to relax, one strained muscle at a time. She's rotating her neck to ease out the kinks when she sees the walker lurch from behind the parked car. 

She darts a quick look back to the others – Daryl, bending to retrieve the few arrows he let fly, propping his dirty boot on a walker's skull for leverage; Maggie and Glenn, her arm around his waist; Hershel and Carol making their slow and careful way through the downed bodies, ensuring that each one is really, truly dead. All of them doing what needs to be done to keep everyone safe.

Beth squares her shoulders, turns to face the walker head on. This one used to be a woman, lank hair straggling loose from a messy bun and still clad in the ragged remains of a faded purple sundress, and for a moment Beth sees her mother stumbling out of the barn, eyes blank and teeth snapping. She shakes her head, licks her lips, and quickly transfers the poker into her left hand so that he can wipe her damp palm on her jeans. 

"Beth! Step back!"

Maggie's voice is strident, her heels stomping loudly on the concrete, and Beth frowns to herself, takes a second to snap a quick look over her shoulder. "I can do this," she calls out before she returns her attention to the walker.

"Beth—"

"Let her be," Daryl says.

Beth barely hears, all her concentration on the walker stumbling unerringly toward her. She takes a half-step forward, gauges the distance between herself and the shambling geek and tries to still her rapidly beating heart. "I can do this," she repeats softly to herself.

Her swing catches the walker more on the shoulder than the head, but it's enough to send the geek reeling to the side. Beth takes another step and draws her arms back, puts her whole body into the next swing and catches the walker on the chin just as it rights itself. The jawbone cracks and shatters as the walker's head snaps back, and Beth doesn't hesitate; she swings again, this time rupturing skull. The walker goes down… and stays down.

Beth stands over the body, breathing heavily and watching the trail of thick blackish blood ooze slowly across the concrete. She can feel more of it speckling her skin. 

"That was good," Daryl says at her side. She jerks, the poker reflexively coming up before she fully realizes that he's not a walker, not a threat. He doesn't seem to notice, just juts his chin toward the geek on the ground. "But next time, if you got one that's taller'n you, go up through the chin. Less work, and less risk to you."

Beth pulls her eyes away from the corpse, meets his and nods. "Through the chin," she says.

"You got it." He plucks at something in her hair, and Beth glances down in time to see that it's a piece of bone before he sniffs and tosses it aside. "C'mon," he says to her, "gotta make sure the inside is clear 'fore it gets dark."

Daryl walks away without a second look, and after a moment Beth turns her back on the body of the walker she just killed; looks up to find Maggie watching her, brow furrowed. She flashes her sister a quick fleeting smile, waits until Maggie nods back before she follows in Daryl's wake.

"I can do this," she says quietly.


End file.
